Welcome to Part 3 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your website using WordPress.
In Part 1 of this series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to automatically drive more traffic is post content consistently!)
In Part Two, we looked at the setup phase of the traffic automation process. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In this section, we discuss the configuration phase of the WordPress traffic automation system. We explain why an expertly configured site is different than a professionally configured one. You will also learn how much work is required to ensure that when everything is set up and configured, you will attract visitors automatically simply by posting new content on a regular basis on your WordPress site.
WordPress Traffic System – Configuration
Being able to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as one of their greatest challenges online. Also, the business landscape is becoming increasingly more competitive worldwide and businesses are looking for any and every opportunity they can to get better results online.
Being able to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide you with a tremendous advantage. Having an expertly configured WordPress site gives your business a significant advantage from the word “go”.
The Difference Is In The Configuration Process
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to explain the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a web presence with an automated online business marketing system!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only is more work required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special type of expert knowledge.
To illustrate this here is an amusing story.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
Everything was going well in the widget manufacturing plant when things suddenly ceased working.
No one could figure out what happened and so the floor manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Soon afterward, the expert arrived and, without uttering a word, headed immediately towards the main control box. After staring silently at the wires and circuitry for no more than 3 minutes or so, the expert then took out a little hammer from his pocket and made a very gentle tap near the bottom-right edge of the unit.
Immediately, everything returned to normal.
The plant manager was greatly overjoyed as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the manager received a request for payment of $5,000.
The manager picked up the phone and dialled the expert, demanding to know why they had been charged so much for so little time delivering such a minimal amount of work. He then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrived on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The main challenge most businesses face online is driving traffic to their sites.
How much money did the widget factory stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one on the factory floor was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have the right to demand fair compensation for spending years developing the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to quickly fix a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a website or blog configured so all you had to do is publish new content and search engines, social networks and dozens of other online properties would be automatically notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your site?)
Although the solution to many problems may seem ridiculously easy once implemented, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires more than installing a website and configuring settings for clients. It requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which programs need to be installed to add certain functionalities to your site.
- Which third-party accounts you need to set up and activate to get desired results
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured in order to ensure that things will work as planned, etc.
(Generating new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this stage of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem technically difficult, it can be quite involved and time-consuming. The reason why is because it’s not as easy as installing one or two plugins, clicking a button … it’s all this and so much more.
The configuration stage is a process that involves your web hosting server, your website or blog, and a number of external sites and services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If all the steps involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic diagram showing all the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s take a brief look at these areas.
Web Hosting
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for site installation purposes. We’re talking about fine-tuning settings and options in your server that affect how your website will handle all web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your web server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the web traffic your site may attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is about planning for both good and unwanted traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like implementing spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
After checking your web server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of external sites and services.
External Services
The purpose of setting up external sites is that all content should be posted to one central location (your site) and from there, it will radiate outwards to other components of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once these external platforms have been added to your traffic system, content pointing back to your site will be automatically added to search, social and aggregator sites. Your content and business will be exposed to new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some sites and services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress settings to save time and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, you will want to set up the following accounts before configuring your WordPress settings:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmasters)
Google Webmasters lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with important information, tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
After setting up your account, you can use your details with traffic-related settings in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s traffic performance, SEO, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and organic referrers, etc.
After setting up your account and site details, you can add your account code to all of your web pages in WordPress using plugins and feed data automatically to many other useful applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your account and site details have been set up, your details can be used with web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers users the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you are planning to grow a professional online presence for your business.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great features, which can be accessed by various WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your web traffic generation system in Part 4 of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and bring new visitors to your site)
You will need to set up your social media accounts before you can configure these as part of your traffic generation system.
After setting up and configuring everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and attract new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have profiles set up with all the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just choose the ones that will work with your system and/or content sharing tools.
(You can post your content to lots of social sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online web platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as second-tier sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add an RSS feed from your site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your RebelMouse account.
There are various solutions that can be incorporated into your traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you would like to explore your options and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up external service accounts, it’s time to configure WordPress.
WordPress Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
WordPress Settings
By default, all WordPress installations include a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Screen)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most important and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to WordPress users …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings)
As described in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have intentionally configured your site settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the update services entered into the Update Services text box
By default, this section lists only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically …
(You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress!)
Download A Comprehensive List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site!
Click the link below to download a comprehensive list of reliable and authoritative ping services for your WordPress site or blog:
Download A List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site
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Note: If you need help setting up the list of ping services on your site, we recommend using a professional web services provider. You can find professional WordPress service providers in our WordPress Services Directory.
Reading
This section affects how visitors will see your content when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can have an influence traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could affect someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your site to read the rest of the content from summaries, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
As far as traffic is concerned, however, the main setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is enabled or not.
Normally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables your site to automatically ping various update services whenever a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, leave this box unchecked …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion
Although discussion settings are mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to blogs linked to from your posts, and to allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks). This can work for you, but it can also drive bad traffic in the form of SPAM comments …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalinks)
Here are some of the options for configuring your permalinks …
(Configuring permalinks)
For a detailed step-by-step tutorial about setting up permalinks in WordPress, go here: How To Improve Your WordPress SEO With Permalinks
Configuring Settings – WordPress Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that can add just about every type of functionality to your site, including traffic generation.
Here are some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. Regardless of the type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you cannot afford to ignore the importance of securing your website or blog.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to hackers and bots.
More information:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web content more indexable …
(Yoast SEO – WP Plugins For SEO)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your website’s SEO. Once properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google and Bing to index, it also gives you control over how your content is presented to Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content with their friends and members of their social networks can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you publish great content that adds value to readers.
(You can easily add social features to your website with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
There are loads of free or inexpensive social sharing plugins to choose from.
Many social share plugins let you select which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some social share plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content which visitors can unlock by sharing your page.
Configuring Settings – WP Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help you drive more traffic to your site.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring layout and design aspects of your website, some themes also include built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site linking structure for faster indexing, easily add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With many themes, adding social sharing features to your site is as easy as clicking a few buttons to enable the function …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features)
Configuring Other WordPress Areas For More Traffic Results
Last (but by no means least) in the WordPress traffic blueprint configuration process, are the elements that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to deal with bad and good traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you do any kind of business online (or are planning to), it’s important that your site complies with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?)
For a detailed article about how to quickly add legal pages to your website or blog, see this article:
WordPress Categories And Tags
Post tags & post categories help search engines index your website, which helps to increase traffic.
(WordPress categories help search engines better organize and index your pages, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your website’s post tags and post categories should be reviewed and set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Process.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the tags and categories you have set up.
A Site Map Of Your Posts And Pages
A site map that displays all of your site’s pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools find more of your site’s content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. Although search engines like Google can index your site just using an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
404 Page – Don’t Lose Traffic!
When visitors searching for your website type in the wrong web address or click on links pointing to destinations on your site that no longer exist, they will normally be presented with an error – page not found message (known as a 404 page) …
(Default WordPress 404 Not Found error page)
A 404 Not Found page can be configured to redirect confused visitors to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up in your server, there are plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once you have your website or blog fully set up and expertly configured, all you then have to do is post content consistently to generate more web traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of a number of different components and web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take many website professionals months to acquire.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is addressed in the next article in our series.
This is the end of Section Three
To read more, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of an tutorial series aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online and drive traffic automatically using a WordPress-powered website and proven online marketing methods.
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group
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